Alec Baldwin has deleted his Twitter account again following a backlash over a comment he made about Gillian Anderson’s accent.
The 30 Rock star responded to a post about The Crown actor – who is American but played Margaret Thatcher in the latest series of the Netflix hit – “switching accents” when she accepted her Golden Globe last weekend.
Earlier in the day, the actor tweeted out a CNN story titled, “Gillian Anderson’s American accent throws some people off.”
He added the message, “Switching accents ? That sounds...fascinating”, apparently a reference to his wife Hilaria, who was engulfed in controversy last year after some accused her of faking her Spanish heritage. Alec quit Twitter in January over the matter.
In a lengthy video shared on Instagram, the actor announced he had deleted his Twitter account, and whilst he did not mention Gillian by name, he denied he was having a dig.
He said: “Of course you can’t do any irony on Twitter. You can’t do any irony in the United States anymore, because the United States is such an uptight, stressed-out place and such an unpleasant place right now.”
The 62-year-old said he was a “huge fan” of the X Files star and his comment was intended to “illustrate the point that multicultural expressions of anyone… that’s your business”.
He added he had “not meant at all to be offensive” and described Twitter as being filled with “a-holes” and “a lot of haters”.
He said: “But I find that, of course, on Twitter, which is where all the a―holes in the United States and beyond go to get their advanced degrees in a―hole-iness, that I had used it as a news aggregator, and I suppose I will do my best to find other places that are similar in their news aggregation in real time and periodicals I like.”
He added: “Twitter is one-third interesting posts… one-third tedious, uninteresting, puerile nonsense, and then it’s one-third, or more maybe, just abject hatred and malice and unpleasantness.”
Hilaria, a yoga teacher and influencer, was accused of misleading people over her heritage and faking a Spanish accent after it emerged she was born in Boston and was originally named Hillary.
The couple, who married in 2012, announced this week they had welcomed a sixth child together.